Workers Expressions

This book explores the interrelations between work and social life. It emphasizes how workers’ expressive forms and public performances connect with processes of social, cultural, and individual empowerment. Departing from perspectives that emphasize organizational integration, equilibrium, and continuity, the authors present evidence from anthropology, history, and folklore to explore intersection of popular culture and working situations. The authors offer new data in the on-going debate about the separation of work and leisure, and raise questions about the diverse representations of class and the labor process. They identify workers’ cultural values that emerge within the changing context of production, and that are not merely an outcome of industrial hegemony. Instead, workers’ representations and articulations of craft mastery, class identity, and gender, reveal transformations of the traditional categories of those who produce and those who appropriate value. The studies of workers’ lives range from contemporary United States and Mexico to China, India, and Japan.

This book explores the interrelations between work and social life. It emphasizes how workers' expressive forms and public performances connect with processes of social, cultural, and individual empowerment. Departing from perspectives that emphasize organizational integration, equilibrium, and continuity, the authors present evidence from anthropology, history, and folklore to explore intersection of popular culture and working situations. The authors offer new data in the on-going debate about the separation of work and leisure, and raise questions about the diverse representations of class and the labor process. They identify workers' cultural values that emerge within the changing context of production, and that are not merely an outcome of industrial hegemony. Instead, workers' representations and articulations of craft mastery, class identity, and gender, reveal transformations of the traditional categories of those who produce and those who appropriate value. The studies of workers' lives range from contemporary United States and Mexico to China, India, and Japan.

Sociological perspectives and their application to social work are an inherent part of the QAA benchmark statements in the social work degree. In addition, graduates must understand how sociological perspectives can be used to dissect societal and structural influences on human behaviour at individual, group and community levels. This fully-revised second edition includes a new chapter on social class and welfare and is mapped to the new Professional Capabilities Framework for Social Work.

A factory worker is fired because her boss disagrees with her political bumper sticker. A stockbroker feels pressure to resign from an employer who disapproves of his off-hours political advocacy. A flight attendant is grounded because her airline doesn't like what she's writing in her personal blog. Is it legal to fire people for speech that makes employers uncomfortable, even if the content has little or nothing to do with their job or workplace? For most American workers, the alarming answer is yes. Here, Bruce Barry reveals how employers and courts are eroding workers' ability to express themselves on and off the job—with damaging consequences for individuals, their employers, and civil society as a whole. He explains how the law and accepted management practice stifle free speech on the job, why employers make repressive choices, and what workers can do to protect themselves. And he shows that not only are our rights as employees being diminished, but also our effectiveness as citizens—as participants in the civic conversations that make democracy work.